Roughly one year ago, author and radio host Eric Metaxas sat down with Pastor Gary Hamrick at Cornerstone Chapel in Leesburg, Va. to discuss Metaxas’s book, Letter to the American Church. Pastor Hamrick said the book was important and timely as he introduced Metaxas to an enthusiastic crowd.
I agree that Metaxas’s book is timely and important, urging Christians to break out of their silence and inaction to fight the cultural evils of our time. The much needed message is soon to be released as a movie.
With inspiration drawn from German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Metaxas takes us back to pre-WWII Germany to show us how silence, along with an irrational separation of politics and religion, led to the perpetration of one of the greatest evils in modern history.
I became a fan of Metaxas’s latest work, seeing it as an indispensable counterargument to the 2017 book The Benedict Option, which conversely urges Christians underground to preserve their faith with a kind of “go hide until the coast is clear” defeatist vibe.
I was disappointed, then, to see Metaxas’s recent video assailing the mainstream evangelical church with a video titled “Dangerous END TIMES Doctrines & The Spiritual Battle Against The Deep State.” Metaxas interviews Benjamin Thomas, author of a new book, Revelation Riddle. Mr. Thomas said he has read “forty or fifty books” on the end times, even as he was storing up food and waiting to be rescued out of the world thanks to rapture teaching that he now believes to be false.
Let me confess that I do believe in a rapture, but like many people, I admit that I’m not 100% sure of the timing of events prophesied in the Bible. As many of us rapture believers say — whether one believes the rapture is before, midway through, or after the tribulation — it’s not a salvation issue. That said, if I had ever known someone like Thomas, who admits to letting a staggering number of end times books influence his life, I would have suspected him of an unhealthy obsession and warned him off the subject.
I’ve also been on the scene long enough to know that the idea of rapture-believing Christians sitting on their hands as the world burns is a hackneyed accusation.
If one rightly considers evangelist Billy Graham as historically the most influential leader of American mainstream Christianity, one should consider that he preached the rapture yet took active stances in the culture — supporting the civil rights movement, for instance, and refusing to speak before segregated audiences. After the 16th Street Baptist Church was bombed in Birmingham, Ala., Graham refused to cancel an integrated meeting at Birmingham’s Legion Field Stadium. For his radical stands, Rev. Graham was threatened by the KKK and needed police protection wherever he went.
In 1973, he told an audience in South Africa that “Christianity is not a white man’s religion and don’t let anyone tell you it’s white or black. ... Christ belongs to all people.”
In 2016, Rev. Billy Graham’s successor, his son the Rev. Franklin Graham, organized a grueling “Decision America Tour,” traveling to all 50 states to pray for America even as he urged Christians “to vote for candidates who are guided by biblical principles and to get involved in the political process across all levels of government.” Thousands gathered to hear him, even in my own city, where he told Christians to run for local and state school boards so they could fight perverse sex and sexuality teachings being forced on America’s children. Rev. Franklin Graham believes in a pre-tribulation rapture.
A favorite teacher of mine was Rev. Irvin Baxter, Jr., who passed away in 2020. His internationally syndicated shows included the radio show Politics and Religion and the TV show End of the Age, which he hosted until his death.
His radio show had a great opening. It began with an irate woman stating boldly, “Look. There are two things I don’t discuss: politics and religion.” It alternates with other people saying they don’t discuss politics and religion, either, and concludes with Rev. Baxter saying, “Politics determines how we’ll live here on Earth. Religion determines how we’ll live forever. I’m Irvin Baxter, I think it’s time we talk about it.”
The program covered current events to show how prophecies written over 2,000 years ago were currently coming to pass. I found it informative for breaking news and commentary. Rev. Baxter himself believed and taught a post-tribulation rapture, yet he also implored his audience to be accepting of all rapture views because nobody’s soul was on the line for it.
Not surprisingly, when Irvin Baxter reportedly died from coronavirus, mocking headlines similarly read, “Irvin Baxter, Who Preached the End Was Near, Dies at 75.” The subheading said “he died of coronavirus, which he implied had been sent by God” — simply because he questioned whether it could be one of the plagues from the book of Revelation. And frankly, I think there were and still are many people wondering that, with or without theological degrees.
With the onset of COVID, we quickly learned that governing bodies would use any crisis to gain control. Only months into the pandemic, so-called “leading thinkers” concluded, “Governments have assumed new powers to trace, track, and control. Some of them have already abused these powers, and it is entirely conceivable that they may never give them back.”
While some people herald 1984’s George Orwell as something of a prophet, and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit-451 now pales in comparison to life in 2024, and as Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World seems like old hat to us now...I ask, what is wrong with turning to the Bible as a trusted source for our future? Why shouldn’t this great book be given more study and weighted with more significance than mere mortal fiction writers?
Just a few months after inviting Metaxas to Cornerstone Chapel to discuss his book, Pastor Gary Hamrick gave a powerful eschatological teaching titled “Israel, Hamas, and End Times.” So far it has nearly 4.5M views on YouTube. It would be interesting to know what Metaxas thinks of it, considering his own recent “dangerous doctrines” video.
Eric Metaxas is a necessitous voice in these turbulent times. I respectfully hope that he will reconsider jumping on the bandwagon of end-times detractors and attacking a core belief embraced by many of those who have been educated and inspired by him.
Susan D. Harris can be reached at www.susandharris.com.
Image via Picryl.
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